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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

Innovative tools take aim at antibiotic-resistant microbes

Diagnostics that rely on bacterial movements, genomics and machine learning could help to address a global crisis.
  1. Jyoti Madhusoodanan

    1. Jyoti Madhusoodanan is a science writer based in Portland, Oregon.

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A technician handles a Petri dish with colonies of tuberculosis strains at a research centre in South Africa

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a major problem around the world. New solutions are hoping to change that. Credit: Joao Silva/NYT/Redux/eyevine

Maha Farhat spent months in 2007 tending to patients at a hospital in Durban, South Africa. Many were infected with HIV. But the infection that preyed on the then-medical-resident’s mind, and her patients’, was caused not by a virus, but by a bacterium: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis. In particular, she was concerned about strains that are resistant to common antibiotics.

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Nature 596, 611-613 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02292-1

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